3 Basic Steps to Obtain FREE Online Aerials & Custom Soil Maps for a Parcel of Land

The Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) online Soil Survey is a great resource for any landowner, real estate agent, developer, or anyone that has an interest in land.

"It has the Official USDA soil information as viewable maps and table for more than 2300 soil surveys..soil maps and data available online for than 95 percent of the nation's counties and anticipates having 100 percent in the near future. The site is updated and maintained online as the single authoritative suorce of oil survey information."

Our office has printed hard copies of the soil surveys for the counties that we work in and they are great.

I prefer the online version anyway because not only can I get Soil Maps, but also Aerials and it has a great measuring tool that tells you the approx acreage.

I use it for both counties that I work in, in Oklahoma, Choctaw and McCurtain.

The Web Soil Survey Site is very user friendly. Most of the navigation tabs are self explanatory.

The best way to learn to use the site is to have some time to play with it when you're not in a hurry and then do just that, play with the maps, menus, navigation buttons.

The NRCS Web Soil Survey Site will tell you the acreage of your AOI (Area of Interest), what kinds of soil are in the area, acreages of each soil type, and it's suitability and limitations for many uses:

• Building Site Development
  
• Construction Materials
• Disaster Recover Planning
  
• Land Classificatons
• Land Management
• Military Operations
  
• Recreational Development
• Sanitary Facilities
  
• Vegetative Productivity
  
• Waste Management
• Water Management
  

The Three Basic Steps are laid out on the main page of the Web Soil Survey Site:
1. Define your area of interest
2. Click the Soil Map Tab
3. Use the Shopping Cart (free) to get your report or download it later.

An example:

I used the site for an area of our farm:

Start with the "Start WSS" Green Button their main page.

Then define your area of interest with the AOI button and with the drop down menus on the left side of the page.

The Site will tell you what types of soil are in your AOIs and their acreage.

The Site will also then tell you how well suited that soil type is for different applications and it's limitations in those applications.

This may seem like an over simplified description of the Web Soil Suvey but I'm here to tell you that is simple to use. You can gather a lot of informaiton about your site whether it's for building a house or planting corn. Next time you have questions about the suitability of a particular parcel of land for a specific application, go to NRCS's Web Soil Survey Site. After all it's your tax dollars ar work :)